The Poetess
by Pyrex Shards
Summary: Roger realized he had struck a nerve in the girl as she turned away slightly, her golden blonde hair bounced along with her head. There was a sigh and then she whispered. "I have to move on."


She had to be in her late teens. He paid her no heed, most nights. He had a pseudo-beatnik coffee shop to run, _The Gypsy,_ on the second floor of an old brick warehouse with chipped white lettering on the side that spelled out the last four letters of the word 'Alternators.'

He puffed at his pipe and surveyed the one-in-the-morning crowd. Mostly teenage ravers from one of the other 'warehouses' come to grab some coffee and wind down before sneaking back to their upper class homes. They would not remember the atmosphere here; their brains were too screwed up. The drab youth of Hillwood's elite. If only their parents could see them know. The man chuckled.

Somewhere in the cavernous room filled with odd and end furniture a boy played a guitar aimlessly, while off in another corner a few girls giggled at something.

Most normal people were already in bed. But somehow he still found business up until three when he had to kick everyone out.

But it was nights like this Tuesday night in particular, when there was cloud cover and no moon, and the glow of the lamps in the room seemed otherworldly, that he would see her. And not just in passing, the observance of another face in the room. He saw her silhouette and somehow she became his anchor the entire night. He couldn't help it. She had gravitational force.

She sat at a table in the front. Alone, always alone. All he knew was her first name, Helga, from the Tuesday poetry readings that she would always attend, such as this night. The first time, when she had been introduced, people couldn't get over her old world name, and how comical it seemed when juxtaposed with her unibrow and her mean demeanor.

That stopped immediately when she poetess unleashed her tirade.

While all the other poems he'd hear were dead, hers had fire. The other wannabe's would read their paper and stutter over every stanza. Helga would read one line from the paper, and then talk directly into the microphone, her words would shut everyone up. She'd clench her fist over the imaginary leash she had over the necks of everyone in the audience.

Helga would put the entire audience through an emotional and spiritual rollercoaster over a boy they would never meet, and then she would sit down in the same chair, smoke a cigarette, look out over the city, and write more poetry in a little leather bound book with a pink pen. She didn't listen to any of the other poems by other people, because they all sucked compared to her.

Yet, he had never spoken to her at all. Never said hi. He had rung her up once. Espresso with sugar.

He had 'fallen in love with her.' It was just a crush though. He was a forty year old man with a bald head, black frame glasses, and a blonde mustache for heaven sake. She was just a kid. But one look at her, and like most of the other people in that room upon hearing her words echo forth form her soul, he couldn't help it. No one could. Her gravitational pull was that strong.

Tonight, the subdued light from outside cast her profile into an incredible silhouette. She had her pen in her hand but she was looking out the window. She hadn't ordered anything the entire night, which was odd. When he approached he could make out blue jeans and an orange shirt. Then he saw the brown duffel bag that looked like it had been made from an old pair of cargo pants. It was at her feet.

He figured, since he was the owner of this place, that he had every right to pull the chair from the table across from her, and then sit down backwards in it to study Helga intently. He leaned forward and rested one arm on the back of the chair while puffing his pipe with the other.

At first she didn't say anything.

He puffed at his pipe again.

"You're the owner of this place. Right?" She didn't look away from the outside world.

"Some would say that, yes. It's a partnership with the bank." He quirked a smile, but Helga didn't flinch.

"I love it here. It is very eccentric."

"Why thank you."

Then she looked at him, and took his breath away. The most beautiful pair of deep blue eyes he had ever seen where staring into his soul from across the table. He had never noticed her eyes before, but now, he couldn't look away.

"You have very pretty eyes." He blurted out before he could stop himself.

Helga laughed and looked outside. She took another puff of her cigarette and blew the smoke carefully out of her nostrils. Then she looked down at her lap. "Thank you."

"Don't mention it."

"What's your name?"

The man removed the pipe from his lips and blew out smoke as he said. "Name's Roger."

"Well Roger. It's nice meeting you."

"The pleasures all mine. You really know how to silence a crowd of talentless kids who couldn't write their way out of a plot hole. But, something tells me tonight is different."

Helga smashed the butt of her cigarette into an old white porcelain bowl on the table and eyed Roger with a quirk to her brow. "You're very perceptive."

"It helps in a pinch."

"Indeed." Helga stated flatly. He watched with interest as she pulled a cigarette case out of her pocket. An old silver cigarette case, sophisticated yet beat up. "You wanna know my story?" Helga asked as she withdrew a cigarette, put the case back in her pocket, and then lit the fresh stick with fire from the candle in the center of the table.

Roger watched her bring the cigarette to her lips and inhale a long drag. He studied his pipe intently. "I've listened to all your poetry. I don't know what else there is."

"That crap doesn't cover half of it." Helga placed her arms on the table and then rested her cheeks in her hands with the cigarette hanging out of her mouth. "I wrote all those when I was thirteen and horny as hell."

He had to stifle a choke on his own saliva.

"And before you ask, I'm not kidding. So don't ask. I don't even know why I told you that just now. I guess it means I can trust you enough."

Another cough and Roger put his pipe to his lips again. "I'd say your trust isn't misplaced but I'd sound conceited. So I'll just pretend I didn't hear that."

"Fair enough. But… I said that to set the stage for what I am about to tell you."

"And that is?"

Helga looked back out the window and puffed on her cigarette. "I haven't written a damn thing since then."

"But I see you over here all the time writing poetry."

"Do you ever see my pen move?"

He couldn't answer that one. So he looked out the window too.

"Judging from your silence you don't know." She sighed. "I supposed you're wondering why I have this hideous looking duffel bag."

"The thought crossed my mind."

"I'm leaving Hillwood, for good."

"May I ask why?"

Helga blew out more smoke. "My muse is dead…" She answered. "I have to revive her lest I die too."

"So you're running away."

Helga looked at Roger with a severe expression. "I'm not running away. I'm running towards."

Roger swallowed. For someone who had lost her muse, there was so much fire, so much passion."

"Toward's what?" Roger swallowed. He could feel danger from this girl too. A free spirit. Any boy her age would be lucky to have her, he realized. There was so much potential in her. But he gathered she knew that, somehow.

"The great big badass world out there beyond those hills. I need to see it for myself."

He imagined she was looking at the pulsing red beacon on top of a radio tower, on a hill that could be seen out the window, so he focused on it too. He thought back to all her poetry, how it had made everyone in this dump feel something every time she spoke, for a certain boy that seemed her all, her everything. So he had to ask. "What about that boy, in all your poems. The one you belong to. The one you couldn't stand to lose."

Roger realized he had struck a nerve in the girl as she turned away slightly, her golden blonde hair bounced along with her head. There was a sigh and then she whispered. "I have to move on."

"And this is the only way?" He asked, concerned. It wasn't every day he encountered a patron to his establishment that had decided to run away from everything, and was using one of his tables as a place to rally her wits for something that was probably very dangerous, even in a questionably civilized country.

Helga looked at him, took one last puff from her cigarette, and then blew the smoke his way while extinguishing the cigarette into an antique porcelain bowl that had to be older than the two of them combined. She stood up and collected her duffel bag, and Roger followed suit.

After a long hard look at Roger's height, Helga looked up at him and smiled. "I wish you were my father. I probably wouldn't be smoking right now either." She walked past Roger, and turned around. "I know what I am doing may sound naïve. But this feels right. I need the freedom."

"From your parents? From life?"

Helga looked down and then at the door. She shook her head and then looked up at Roger. Her eyes were sparkling, but they also held hope. "The freedom to find out who I really am, without interference from _anything_ in my past. I need to grow."

Roger looked down and kicked the tip of his shoe at the old carpet.

"Goodbye Roger, it was nice meeting you, and by the way, the coffee here sucks, you need to get better beans."

He laughed, remembering her order. "The sugar?"

"Got that right Bucko."

Roger laughed as Helga walked through the door and out of The Gypsy for good. "I'll keep that in mind. Good luck." He whispered.

It was only about twenty minutes later, when the last of the crowd had gone home, save for the boy plucking at his guitar and whispering the sweet lyrics to a girl sitting intently beside him.

There, at one thirty in the morning, the door opened, and in walked a young man that Roger had sworn he had seen before, on Tuesdays during the poetry readings. He couldn't quite put his finger on it, but he knew he had seen him before. Who could mistake a blonde boy with green eyes and an almost oblong shaped head? He wanted to dismiss it as a trick of the light, but he wasn't sure.

He entered the coffee house and headed straight for the counter, where Roger was 'busy' preparing to close for the night. "Excuse me." The kid asked with a surprisingly deep yet childish voice.

"Yes? Can I get you something?"

The kid smiled. "No. No. I just wanted to know, have you seen a girl here. Um. You know. The one who reads all that really good poetry? Her name's Helga and I." The kid trailed off and he laughed nervously and put a hand behind his head. Of course it was odd that he'd be out so early in the morning, so Roger was quick to dismiss it, until a thought crossed his mind.

This kid, there was something about his character, the way he carried himself, and the way he looked, fit Helga's poetry perfectly. Roger frowned, because it would be too weird to laugh at the irony that yelled through his brain.

He put down the pen in his hand, a pen that he was using to write poetry on a pad of paper, something he hadn't done in years, but had strangely been inspired this night, to pick up the habit again.

What was he witnessing here? Two souls passing in the night yet barely touching for the last time? The ghost of something that could have been? Or was it simply the nature of things? Was it something that just had to happen this way, for two souls to reap the full potential of their lives independent of each other, when spiritually they belonged together?

He didn't know. He was just a third party to this. But it was there. He knew it as a poet, as a dreamer, inspired again by the very Poetess who was stepping out into the world with questions that he, or the boy on the other side of the counter, would never know the answer to.

He smiled sadly.

"I'm sorry kid. You just missed her…"


End file.
